If the trends of past LSAT score releases are any indication, you can reasonably expect that the June 2011 scores will be released shortly – likely some time tomorrow.  Who knew that three weeks could feel like three decades?

This week Ann Levine (www.lawschoolexpert.com) has written a very insightful blog post that brings some much needed perspective to the LSAT and law school in general, and offers 5 things that you can do while waiting for that email.

From LawSchoolExpert.com’s blog:

I know the waiting feels endless, but just think about all of the people taking the bar exam who have to wait three months to find out IF, after making it through law school,they will be able to actually practice law. I do expect scores to come out by email in the next 12-36 hours and I want to keep you all nice, calm, occupied, and feeling productive in the meantime. Here are some things to do in the next day or two:

1. Articulate the reasons why you want to be a lawyer. Not why you want to go to law school, but why you want to be a lawyer. Write them down and keep it in your wallet and look at it every time you spend money. I know no one will really do this, but I think it’s a GREAT idea. If you don’t want to be a lawyer but want to go to law school for some other reason, write down those reasons and spend the next day doing research on other ways to get to your goal without going to law school.

2. Go see Hangover 2 or Bridesmaids. I really want to see both of these films. I don’t have time (just moved houses and am trying to finish up my book to help you decide whether to go to law school) so please see these films, laugh a lot, and let me know how they are. One of my favorite traditions when I was in law school was going to see a movie on Friday afternoons. It was a great escape, and I haven’t had time to see movies since, so let me live vicariously through you….

Read The Full Article

As prospective law school students, your LSAT score is one key piece to a larger admissions puzzle that you must put together.  I’m sure you’ve heard many times by now how important your LSAT score and undergraduate GPA are to your acceptance in to law school – but there still remains a bit of mystery surrounding certain aspects of the overall application.  Just what are admissions officers looking for in a prospective JD student?

This week, Manhattan LSAT is pleased to be teaming up with AdmissionsConsultants.com – an admissions consulting firm with admissions counseling experience that spans decades – to bring you an exclusive interview with Sara Zearfoss, Dean of Admissions at the University of Michigan Law School.

Here is an excerpt from their exclusive interview:

What do you consider the most important part of the application process?

The personal statement, far and away. There’s a strong perception among applicants that the make-or-break factors are LSAT and UGPA – but while those are unquestionably important indicators of academic ability, it is certainly true that many people with strong metrics are not admitted, and also true that people whose metrics are well below our medians do get admitted. What never happens, however, is that someone who writes a terrible personal statement gets admitted.

To read the full interview, please click HERE.

Warm Up Those Medulla Oblongatas!

Yet another sign of my geekiness: I love Tuesdays because that’s when the NY Times has a science section. (And for those who are struggling with science passages on the LSAT, it’s not a bad place to start getting some extra practice – though throw in some more technical material as well). Last Tuesday there was an article that caught my eye: Brain Calisthenics for Abstract Ideas is about research on training kids’ intuitive senses about abstract problems. What the white lab coat folks did is develop a computer program that made kids match graphs to equations. The kids didn’t need to solve anything, they just needed to match them on gut instinct (which here means a general understanding of how equations graph out).

I love it! I used to teach math and I did some of this sort of thing – we’d always work on estimating answers before we learned algorithms (the formal steps for solving something). I think building up a student’s intuitive sense of a problem is essential. The question is how to do it for the LSAT?

One way we do it is through the LSAT Arcade. Our curriculum team came up with a bunch of different games, that work very specific mental micro-muscles and builds your intuitive sense of things.

Another tool in your arsenal is lots of practice! Read more

You’ve just gone five rounds with the LSAT.  How do you feel ? Relieved? Depressed?  Nervous?  Befuddled? Angry?

These are all natural emotions for someone fresh off an LSAT.  Hopefully you’ve learned a little bit about Zen and the Art of LSAT as you’ve been prepping for the last few months, but if you’re really freaked out – or just naturally anxious about how things went – we’re in your corner.  Come to our Free Online Review the June LSAT Workshop, led by two of our rock star instructors.  Whether you’re a champion of the LSAT world, or in need of a bit more training, this Review the LSAT workshop is a must attend.

In this session we will review the most challenging logic games from the June Exam, as well as any of the newer curveballs that the LSAC may have decided to throw at you…  We will also address the pesky question of whether or not you should be considering a retake in October.

Of course the decision to retake will be largely contingent upon your June score, which is scheduled to be released Wednesday, June 27^th via email. Past trends tell us however, that you can expect your scores to be emailed to you a bit sooner than that.

While you’re waiting, you may find some of our articles about retakes a useful starting point for making your decision about future LSATs.

Good Advice Is Hard To Come By

You want to go to law school and we want to help! Why? Because we want you to be the next Atticus Finch! (And your mom called and asked us to give you some advice – and it’s so hard to say no to such a sweet lady). If you have a low score, we can help! But what if you’re done with the LSAT and all you got is a low score and a lousy t-shirt?

We’d love to give you a bunch of admissions advice, but we won’t. That’s not what we’re great at. MY mother said to do one thing and do that thing incredibly well, (and it better not involve gambling, professional wrestling, or reality TV). So, don’t listen to us – instead read some stuff read by people who know more than we do about Law School Admissions. Here’s Ann Levine’s take on low LSAT scores (how low is low?), as well as some ideas about transferring up. I think/hope neither of these will apply to many of you, but for those of you on the fringe of the score spectrum, these are some good ideas  – though, studying and re-taking the LSAT may also be smart!

Listen to your mother, and Ann.

The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) has put a new policy in place that benefits LSAT takers.  Starting with the upcoming (June 6^th ) exam, LSAT takers now have the option to withdraw their registration up until midnight (EST) the day before the exam (i.e. June 5^th).

Prior to the implementation of this new rule, students were required to decide if they wanted to withdraw from the test before the Test Date Change Deadline– which was usually about three weeks before the test date–leaving little leeway for those who remained unsure about their readiness during the last few weeks of their prep programs.This policy was especially unfair to those students who encountered unforeseen life events that hindered their ability to take the exam.Now students may withdraw their registration without the worry of having an “absence” on their future score reports, which can sometimes be interpreted negatively by admissions councilors.

It should be noted that students who wish to transfer their registration fee still need to postpone their exam registration before the Test Date Change Deadline in order to retain the money they have paid.

Rule Equivalency Questions are Meant to be Broken

The LSAT is a funny beast. On the one hand it stays very consistent – it’s still paper and pencil, still given simply four times per year, and still requires a number two pencil. But, on the other hand, it keeps throwing us small curve balls, small changes in what it asks of us. And these changes happen in every section: Logical Reasoning no longer has multiple questions about one stimulus, Reading Comprehension now has comparative passages, and Logic Games, around the year 2000, entered the Modern Era (read the intro to our Logic Game Strategy Guide to learn what that is). Excitingly, there’s a new Logic Games curve. It’s the introduction of a new question type – Rule Equivalency questions.

If you’ve taken one of the more recent LSATs, you might remember a question that asks something like “Which of the following, if substituted for the rule that . . . would have the same effect . . .” Some of these were quite easy, some were rather tricky, and they were all novel.

If you have already learned the basics of each of the games, take a look at our White Paper on this new question type.

They are letting them in to law school younger and younger these days..

Browsing the headlines of the law school related world today, I came across a very interesting report from CNN. It tells the story of a law student in Spain who took his parents to court in an attempt to force them to resume paying his allowance of $588 per month.

And you thought you really stuck it to Mom and Dad that time you came home 4 hours after curfew!

In a fortunate decision for the well being of the human race, the judge ordered the man to find a job and leave his parents house within 30 days.

Time to rethink your part time job

You might be too far  down the application highway to take advantage of this, but I wanted to tell you about some interesting gigs that may provide you with some great experience before heading to law school. These come from very different sides of the criminal law world:

1. On the DA’s side (if you somehow never watched Law and Order, “DA” = “District Attorney”, i.e. the city’s lawyer), some offices hire investigators to help prosecute cases. For the Manhattan DA, for example, try this: //manhattanda.org/careers/supportstaff/apply.shtml. For this office, it’s usually a two-year position, and you can get involved with some very interesting cases.

2. On the defense side, some Public Defenders also hire investigators. (And if you don’t know what a Public Defender is, why are you going to law school?)  A cousin of mine did this in New Orleans a couple of summers ago – //www.opdla.org/investapp.html and said it was fascinating.

If you’re aiming for law school and you’re in college now, consider trying out one of these internship/positions. You have plenty of years ahead of you, so why not take an interesting detour that could make you a more impressive applicant and give you a sense of what the legal world is like?

Don’t forget, LSAT scores are good for five years!

Let Them Eat Cake?

Oh oxymoron, how I love thee.  Your beauty lies in your simplicity and the possibility for cheekyness in your ranks is infinite:  legal brief, controlled chaos, common phenomenon, civil war, minor miracle, and of course my favorite, Microsoft Works, are all fine examples of the turns a phrase’s meaning can take when one simple word is added (Logical Reasoning, anyone?).

The need for you to pay close attention to words is not going to wane anytime soon. Why?

Because word interpretation is a central element in the comprehension and practice of law. In law school and in your law career, you will most likely be faced with situations where it will literally be your job to change the meaning (or perceived meaning) of a word or phrase. How a word or phrase is interpreted is often the deciding factor in the direction a case takes.  Take for example the lawsuit against Arianna Huffington, Founder, President, and Editor-in-Chief of HuffingtonPost.com. Ms. Huffington is currently being sued by Huffington Post “volunteer” bloggers who are arguing that they deserve to share some of the profits and value that they have created from their contributions to the site.

This case is not without precedent.  Back in the nineties two volunteer chat room monitors – from the then super popular AOL – sued AOL for violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act after successfully arguing that AOL exploited their contributions to the product.  AOL ended up settling out of court for $15 million.

So while the intended outcome of this lawsuit is to prevent exploitative behaviors on the part of business owners, the effect it will have on the perceived meaning of words will certainly be a part of its legal fall out. Will the word “volunteer” no longer mean “to do for free” in the context of the law? These are the kind of questions that you – the future lawyers of America – will be helping to resolve someday soon.